Mission Espiritu Santo - Part Dos

More from my mission trip this weekend. I couldn’t leave it without showing you some of the mission, because it really is quite beautiful, and all I could do yesterday was talk about fiber. I’ve been thinking about dyeing things all day. So here’s another mostly picture post, just to show some of my trip. Oh, and sheep!

Maybe you remember me saying I love Gregorian chant? Well, here’s a bonus - I found a rare CD of Gregorian chant performed there in the Espiritu Santo chapel! It’s called, appropriately, Gregorian in Goliad and is not really available so much, it just happened to be available because of the place. I’ve been enjoying it very much. I told you I had the perfect trip.

First, animals with hooves! I may have mentioned impromptu sheep herding yesterday? These fine fellows had escaped their pasture on 183 and were trying to wander down the road. A quick U-turn and stop in front of them, and they turned around and wandered back into their field.

Sitting on a cool, breezy porch, sipping blue cream soda, watching the sky. The (newly painted!) mission sanctuary through the arches.

A couple of details. On the left, an exposed piece of wall left over from a wall that no longer exists. This wall was once part of the living quarters of the monks - walls sheltering rooms now open to the sky where young pecans grow. On the right a canon and cacti growing in a carved gourd, familiar elements of this life.

This sort of arched passageway says “monk” to me - whether it’s the interior passageway around the courtyard of a cloister, or an outdoor breezeway like this. I’ve always dreamed of having something like this as part of my house, a deep passageway of shady calm.

When I walked out of the fiber lesson, this is the sight that greeted me as the sun started down toward the horizon. This tree, with inch-long thorns and resident spiders, is one they use for dyeing fabric. The chapel, well - it’s still in use, and in fact was refurbished, refurnished and re-painted using historical dyes and patterns four years ago. You can even get married here if you’d like.

This was my favorite photo of the trip, just a homey, simple scene. Cotton is a bear to grow, a bear to pick (thorns, bugs, etc) but it’s beautiful on the stem or dried. And the quality of light that day just was amazing. I think I would be a happier person if I could choose the quality of light for my life.

Hope you’ve enjoyed my little tour!

Fiber at the Mission Espiritu Santo in Goliad

The back roads of Texas have a variety of rather picturesque things to share, so yesterday Jeff and I decided to find some of those things. Our eventual destination was Goliad, in particular one of the many Spanish missions from the 1700s in Texas. Mission Espiritu Santo was once a particularly large ranch in southern Texas that specialized in longhorn cattle. The “mission” part comes in where they used native workers for their economic activities and also taught them Christianity in exchange for basic food and housing.

A volunteer’s current weaving project. Onion skin yellow, madder root orange.

I’m not the person you want along on a historical tour. I, ah, have studied rather a lot of history and I, um, tend to correct the tour guides and make comments about the inaccuracy of displays. Hey, what can I say? The guy that worked at the mission was trying to tell some visitors that the “savages” were cannibals. Riiiight. Who hired that guy?

A yarn winder and baskets of pecans for dyeing yarn.

In any case, the yarn-loving religious history nut in me had a great day at the mission. Not only was it a beautiful day, but it turns out that there were some people there who really did know what they were talking about. Their specialty? Dyeing, spinning and weaving at the mission. Isn’t that completely awesome? They are volunteers, a husband and wife team of retirees who spend part of their year in Texas and give demonstrations to guests while they’re here.

One of the lovely volunteers and a standing spindle & carding tools.

I learned about four different spinning techniques, 4 types of looms and a bunch of dyeing stuff. I have never dyed, spun or woven before, it seems very complicated and difficult so I’ve not tried. But I’ve wanted to. Of course you can imagine I might be interested in such things given my other interests.

Two harness loom - two sets of heddles - with a WIP. The volunteers made all the blankets hanging on it, too.

In fact, I’m particularly interested in natural dyes. I’ve long been interested in herbology and stuff, and so this was just awesome. Pecans for brown, indigo for blue (you know you have to use acid to get blue out?), madder root and cochineal beetle for red, onion skin and flowers for yellow … oh so fascinating! I can just see myself at the farmer’s market looking for new dye possibilities. Sorry, Jeff, I think this is next. I apologize about your kitchen in advance.

Natural kettle- dyed skeins of hand-spun wool.

I was also fascinated by the spinning and weaving. I’ve always wondered how such machines and tools work. I can’t say I’ve ever looked at a loom up close before, or had the opportunity. I knew you can sorta throw your shuttle back and forth, but given that you have to, you know, weave, I didn’t see how throwing of any sort was possible. Now I see! They they told me all about warp and heddles and creating sheds.

Two sets of heddles on the loom and the striped warp threads.

I love how clever people can be. Who thought of this weaving loom thing, anyway? I’m still in awe of however it is my sewing machine does what it does. Now I want a loom so I can inspect and try things out. This is just great. I’m told that doing the warp and the heddle process is fairly dull - I can see that. But it’s still really cool.

Foot pedals on the floor loom and a backstrap loom.

It was an incredibly interesting trip overall. It’s the sort of thing where I remember why I went into history in the first place. This isn’t by any means recent technology, no matter how new it is to me. Thinking about these people around 1775 shaving sheep, picking cotton, picking seeds out of cotton, carding the wool and cotton, spinning the fibers into thread and then weaving fabric - and it had to be done for the entire local population. It’s just fascinating. It was such a big process to do it, such a lot of work for so many to clothe everybody and provide blankets and things for the church. How long would it take, how much effort, just for a pair of pants or a shirt?

Anyway, I am still excited. Back later with pictures of the actual mission. I have a cute sheep or two to share as well (Jeff and I did some impromptu herding).

A day in the life

It’s awfully nice when you can do something different with your day than you usually do.  Even if it’s just going to the doctor, or just sitting at home in the morning cleaning up data files (wow, didn’t I have an exciting day?) Too much sameness drives me nuts.  Actually met a doctor I liked today.  Typically, no.  We had some political excitement today just a quarter mile from my office…

… pause … I wonder what just crashed down off of my roof and down to the ground?  That was alarming. Thinking about caring …. nah, I’m sure it’s fine …

Helicopters at the Alamo?

Well then!  So as I said, UT’s Rec Center had the Obama-Clinton debate this evening.   Now local news is completely beside itself with the local version of the talking heads.    Definitely the locals haven’t figured out the talking head thing quite yet. It’s looking a teeny bit amateur.  And of course they’ve brought out the helicopters.  Wow.  Ooh, there’s Huckabee in front of the Alamo (cliche!).  People ususally ignore Texas, this is weird!

Saw bunches of students being  … well, students, today.  Excitable, activist, that sort of thing. Left my doctor’s office near campus and this huge group of people in front of a cafe started wailing and waving Clinton signs at me.  I was pretty startled until I figured out what was going on.  I wish Clinton hadn’t called attention to our local senator Kirk Watson freezing on camera. Kirk’s really nice, and has done a lot for people around here, and I think she could have left him out of it.  It seemed like a cheap, unnecessary dig at the expense of a hardworking guy.

Brilliant Blocks

Amidst the doctors, political excitement and data, I kept working on adding black borders to squares. This has two purposes - one is aesthetic and the other unity. With all the different colors and styles, the black is there with the purpose of creating a common, unifying element. Whatever the pattern, the style, the texture of the granny squares, this border gives a finite space to the donors’ creations. In the end, it is supposed to give the effect of a stained glass window. Pretty cool, eh? It would also be a good way to build a sampler blanket, if you were into sampling granny square blocks.

With these squares, I’m amazed at the variety, yet really there are definite repeating patterns and colors. A lot of 3-dc, 2-ch in pinks.  All sorts of yarn textures. You know, though, surprisingly it isn’t that hard to create these borders, just to create something similar for each square, no matter how it’s made or with what.  Fiddle with it a bit, and they just sort of work.

I admit - it’s nice to see all these examples of people’s crocheting - now I know that my crocheting is, er, normal.  When I teach myself things, I do wonder if what I do is totally unlike what others do.  I’ve been very interestedly reading all the slips that go on the blocks, too. It’s really quite something to see all these squares from all these people, and to see the wonderful tags that people have added.  Some cute things.  I just did one square from Japan.

Well, off to listen to more helicopters.  This can quit any time.